Toto Wolff is not underestimating the opposition, and the Mercedes boss says both Williams and Red Bull could have been more competitive in Australia

Wolff suggested that Red Bull would have been more of a threat had Sebastian Vettel not had a troubled weekend.

“If you see where they [RBR] were two weeks ago, we need to be very careful,” said Wolff. “We haven’t seen Sebastian running with a reliable car and a fast car, and you would expect him, with his experience, to go even faster. So we have to keep on pushing.”

While his Williams team mate Felipe Massa was out at the first corner, Valterri Bottas was one of the few drivers who could overtake in Australia, and he finished fifth despite losing time when he clipped the wall early on.

“I guess if you look at Valtteri’s pace before he hit the wall, and then I think his steering wheel was not completely straight, and then his pace afterwards, I would say if they have a normal race and they qualify better than here, probably they would have ended up on the podium. I’m quite sure they would have ended up on the podium.”

The McLaren team applaud Kevin Magnussen’s performance after the Australian GP. (Photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

On Sunday evening, Ron Dennis made no secret of his satisfaction, not just at the performance of Kevin Magnussen, but also of the whole McLaren team which earned second and third places after Daniel Ricciardo’s exclusion.

The pit wall made some particularly good calls with Jenson Button, which helped the Brit to leapfrog up the order.